The City of Toronto is pulling an unusual manoeuvre in order to reach a contract with its outside workers, and it comes with a risk, according to labour relations experts.

Instead of pressuring the workforce to agree to concessions with a lock out, the City announced on Friday it would impose new work terms if a deal is not struck by Feb. 5. That puts any sort of labour disruption at the feet of the CUPE Local 416, which has yet to take a strike vote, and says it has no plans to.

“This means it’s business as usual unless the union decides otherwise,” said Maurice Mazerolle, an industrial and labour relations expert at Ryerson University.

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“It gets the city off the hook,” he said. It also opens up the possibility of backlash.

While, in theory, operations could continue at the city for an extended period of time without a contract, the end goal — also stated by City Manager Joe Pennachetti — is to finalize the terms of a new collective agreement, Mr. Mazerolle said.

But the act of unilaterally changing the terms of work conditions is sure to rile some workers, or at least the union leadership, who see it as an attack.

In retaliation, they may start enforcing the existing labour rules to the letter, a “death by 1,000 cuts” scenario, that could also end up grinding service to a halt, Mr. Mazerolle said.

In a public statement, Mr. Pennachetti said that in the absence of a strike vote, all CUPE 416 employees are expected to keep working.

David Doorey, an associate professor of labour and employment law at York University, said the union could deploy rotating strikes or work-to-rule campaigns in opposition, while workers continue to collect their pay cheques.

A similar scenario played out at Canada Post last summer, he pointed out, which resulted in a lock out after all.

“If the employer begins to contract out bargaining unit work, being free from collective agreement restraints, we can expect picket lines and hostilities and a bunch of happy lawyers running back and forth to court seeking injunctions for this and that. It will look a lot like the strike from two years ago even if there is no strike,” Mr. Doorey wrote on his law blog.

On the other hand, Mr. Mazerolle argues, if the city stuck to rescinding work restrictions around bumping and scheduling — provisions that would free up huge amounts of resources, time and efficiencies — then “it’s hard for the union to argue that we can’t work this way.” And, he added, the longer employees work under new conditions, the harder it is to get the city to agree to anything else.